Up The Tower (24 page)

“Oh yeah?” said Ore. “You got food ideas?”

“No. The escape pod.”

“It won't work,” said Samson. “It doesn't have any power. Crash...he never maintained it.”

“Yes. But I do.”

“No.” Samson stood up. “No. Enough is enough. Stop it. We aren't doing that.”

“There is no choice, Partner-Samson. You are leaving here alive.”

Soft hums and tiny gasps of machinery. Partner reached into its chest and pulled out the glowing blue cylinder of its battery.

“There,” it said. “There.”

Samson grabbed its hands, clapping him, trying for a moment to push the battery back inside. But its arms were locked in place.

“That's a hell of a copbot,” said Ore.

“Yeah.” Samson took the battery. “Yeah.”

Ore walked over to the pile of Petrov's data slabs and began gathering them.

“I don't know,” she said. “Maybe they're worth something.”

When the pack was full, she fell to a knee. She could not pick up the pack and keep moving. Samson helped her into the escape pod. Walking was too hard for her.  It was all hard for her, and soon it would be nothing. The replacement of the power source was easy—Partner's went straight into the socket. Holograms powered on, the engines of the small craft droning. A screen displayed in blue light—the battery was almost completely drained. Not enough in it to get them very far.

All the fighting, restructuring, reforming—Partner had almost been out of juice.

“You ready?” he asked Ore.

She was quiet—eye closed. Unconscious.

Hurry, he thought. Hurry to anywhere. Pray for help.

Samson flipped switches, pressed buttons. The engines roared to life and powered them away from the crumbling Tower. In seconds they were past the broken barrier of the Mississippi, out of Junktown. Past all flooding. Past all evidence of broken earth. It all clipped by them, becoming a green blur.

Then, the power failed.

Samson's only trajectory had been East—into old Illinois. Their entire trip had been a descent. As the power finally left the pod, they were forty feet above the ground.

They landed hard, crashing into an empty field. Rolling. Bouncing up and then down and then up again. Ore woke, spitting blood, coughing blood, losing so much. Too much. They hopped once, twice, and landed on the third, finally banging to a stop against a tractor.

Some kind of soybean field. Neat rows of plants everywhere. They landed with the seats upside down, facing the earth.

Parts of the pod caught fire. Samson unlatched himself from his seat and banged the door open. It exploded out, pneumatics hissing. He unlatched Ore from her seat. The fire spread around them both, licking at the leather interior. Her foot caught on the safety latch of the seat.

“Come on,” said Samson. “Come on, come on.”

He tugged at her harder now—she began to loosen, the latch digging still into her ankle.

“Come on, girl. Come
on
, girl...”

All the way out now. She collapsed on him. They were outside in the green of the field. Samson could not shake the feeling he had landed on some alien planet. There was light shining down on them—real natural sunlight. There was quiet—except for birds singing.

The pod’s interior was all eaten up with fire now. Smoke billowed up from the machinery.

Samson held his sister. Her blood spilled out on him. Warmer than even the sunlight. So much of it. He put his hands over her torso where he could feel the wound pulsing.

“I can fix you,” he said. “We can fix this.”

A woman approached from across the field. A woman and a man, in fact, both calling out and waving. They each carried thick round, red medcans on their shoulders. He shouted for them to hurry.

They did.

* * * * *

I
very much understand that at some point, even the most uneducated of readers must begin to ask—why focus on these people? This day was full of disaster. Why not focus on the last moments of the Glorious Mind, Nicolai Petrov? Why not seek out the sports stars, who spent their efforts and their fortunes (in the days following the disasters) saving the children of the city and providing them with education and comfort? Why not scan and follow the Mayor of St. Louis, who hazarded his life in combat against the Tri-American CEO and, in the process, likely saved thousands of lives and managed to evacuate nearly half of the county before the riots began?

These are legitimate questions, but of course, the answer is very simple—because you know those are the questions to ask.

There are even more stories hidden in this disaster than we are aware of. And though these five individuals end up "touching greatness" so to speak, they are still relatively normal, unassuming folk. Cogs in the wheels of a society that had little use for them other than something to be replaced.

There is a saying: History is the diary of a madman.

These individuals are as much of the madness as anyone.

We can't ever really know what happened to some of the figures in this story. However, given what we know of them from the records I have obtained, we can make a few guesses.

For Ana Konopolis, there are no guesses needed. She was employed briefly as a corporate assassin for Groove before starring in a reality show, “Assassin For Love,” in which she worked through the grief of her supposed lover, the dead clone Victor, by murdering the corporate enemies of Groove. The show was hailed as a critical success but ultimately failed due to poor ratings as a result of continual power outages. She died of cholera in the outbreak of 2115 while working in a hospital.

Ororo Castelle, after recovering from her wounds, later relocated to the area outside of Chicago where she initiated one of the earliest Petrovian governments. Indeed, there are some who consider her to be the “Forgotten Mother of the Republic,” as it was she who carried Petrov's writings from the falling Tower and uploaded them into the public domain. This foray into public policy eventually took over the whole of Chicago, which now, as you know, holds a considerably powerful seat in the Forum Hall. She died in her sleep, at the ripe old age of ninety-four, in 2180.

Her brother, Samson Castelle, is harder to nail down. His knowledge of technology certainly seemed to give the early Petrovians an advantage in their bloody struggles against the corpocracy—especially after the duumvirate Groove-American was formed. There are records of letters to him from his sister Ororo up until she is seventy-four, but all other personal records are lost to this day.

I am lost as well. I am as lost as any of you are, I expect, when trying to ensure that some sense be gained from this whole mess.

Our civilization today is, I think, something to be proud of. There are problems, no doubt, but for “every problem there is a canal, and for every canal, a boat,” as Petrov liked to say.

It is troublesome then, in that case, to see what can be seen about humanity when examining these records. We come, all of us, from terrors. There is not a time in history that you could point out in which humanity was doing everything it could to break itself off from the shackles of incumbent ruin—perhaps not even today. We are often blind to our own circumstances.

By living in the furs of civilization skinned from beasts of disaster and slaughter, taking warmth in the present from the virtue of endless mistakes and cruelties of others in the past, I feel significant questions begin to arise about whether we deserve any comfort. Whether we deserve such kindness and love for which so often we venture out from our homes, or whether we have earned the justice for which so often we journey away from the narrow avenues of our lives.

It is not for me to say.

I will say this:

There have not been P-L mechanized infantry—copbots—or indeed any of their descendants in many dozens and dozens of years. The ban on robotized labor extends to governmental work, including all manner of law enforcement.

The P-L series database still exists, however. I found it in a not-often-visited corner of the Hall of Records, buried deep within other databases on artificial intelligences. While searching through this record for the subjects of this story, I found a very curious and heartening note.

Perhaps, when seeing what I saw there, you too might be fascinated that such a note existed:

––––––––

P
-L-Eight-Four-Five. Manufactured 08/16/2104. Deactivated 08/17/2104.

A Good Cop. A Better Friend.

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P
erhaps, then, you might write a book like this.

# # #

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A
n independent author's success relies in large part on word-of-mouth. If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review on Amazon, even if it's only a couple of lines. Thank you!

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O
utside of the dystopian world of UP THE TOWER, J.P. Lantern has also created an entirely new vision of a Old West-like Mars.
THE RED COUNTRY TRILOGY
and
AROUND THE MARTIAN FRINGE
follow a series of interconnected settlers as they struggle to make life work on the exciting and often violent life in the harsh frontier of terraformed Mars. If you enjoyed UP THE TOWER, make sure to read them all!

––––––––

A
lso available is
DUST BOWL
, a post-apocalyptic thriller. Ward is a misguided soul who joins a cult to stay alive in a disastrous Southwestern United States. He kidnaps and kills to stay alive, but soon learns that there's more to life than just living to the next day.

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I
f you want to get an automatic email about the latest stories and news from J.P. Lantern,
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A
nd if you enjoy fascinating insights about science, science fiction, fantasy, politics, class, or gender, make sure to check out the J.P. Lantern
webpage
,
Facebook page
, and follow him on twitter @jplantern. He follows back!

Thanks!

Did you love
Up The Tower
? Then you should read
Dust Bowl
by J.P. Lantern!

The fabric of society, ripped apart by a horrible war, is rapidly dissolving. Cities collapse, diseases flourish, and brutal gangs control the roads. The Order offers salvation in the form of faster-than-light ships able to travel to new habitable planets—but passage on the ships is only granted for carrying out The Order's monstrous will. Ward, a grieving young alcoholic, longs to leave the ruined world behind him, along with all his guilt. His choice seems simple: survive by joining the monsters in The Order, or face the end of the world alone.

He soon finds, however, that he is not made for such nightmarish work, and must fight to preserve all the goodness he can find.

Read more at
J.P. Lantern’s site
.